As an Electrical Engineering Group Lead at MBARI, my primary responsibility is to develop scientific instruments and underwater vehicles to increase our understanding of the world’s oceans. During my time at MBARI, I have worked on a wide variety of projects in collaboration with chemists, geologists, marine biologists, and ecologists. In addition to designing, building, and testing new instrumentation, I follow my equipment out to sea where we routinely deploy and service them. Below are some links to a few of the projects I have worked on:

The Benthic Rover
The AUV Gulper
The MiniROV

Educational Background

B.S., Mathematics, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1995
M.S., Mechanical Engineering,University of California, Berkeley, 2000
Ph.D., Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley/UCSF, 2003

Cruise Participation

I have been lucky enough to participate in many research cruises with MBARI scientists on both the R/V Rachel Carson and the R/V Western Flyer. I have also been lucky enough to participate in expeditions to the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the Sargasso Sea.

Here are some pictures taken at sea:

iceberg

Antarctic tabular iceberg in the Weddell Sea.

Arctic Sunrise

Arctic sunrise and MiniROV deployment with
Dale Graves and Charlie Paull.

Benthic Rover

The Benthic Rover at Station M on an unusually calm day.
Photo by C. Buchner.

Alana with Thumbs up

Henry Ruhl and I double-check our checklist on the back deck of the R/V Western Flyer.